Margaret Mee in the Amazonhttp://www.doaks.org/library-archives/library/library-exhibitions/margaret-mee/margaret-mee-and-the-flora-of-the-amazon
A brief history of Margaret Mee's life and work in the AmazonMargaret Ursula Mee was born in May 1909 near Chesham, thirty miles outside of London. However, she made a name for herself half a world away in the Brazilian Amazon. Mee and her future husband Greville—a successful commercial artist—first traveled to São Paulo in 1951 to care for Mee’s ailing sister. “We thought we would stay for three or four years,” Greville later remarked, “but it has grown into a lifetime.” Mee, Margaret. Margaret Mee, In Search of Flowers of the Amazon Forests: Diaries of an English artist reveal the beauty of the vanishing rainforest. Edited by Tony Morrison. Suffolk, England: Nonesuch Expeditions, 1988. p 24.

Mee began work as a teacher at a local art school, and soon she became inspired by the region’s flora, particularly the coastal forests. In 1955 she decided to travel deep into the Amazon, then a 12 hour flight away, on her first expedition. The following January, Mee set off for the region of the Gurupi, a tributary of the Amazon River.

The expedition lasted for months. During this time, Mee lived among the indigenous people and endured multiple hardships, from malaria and hepatitis to scores of insects, giant anacondas, and nightly attacks by vampire bats. Rather than being deterred by the untamed tropics, Mee was invigorated and inspired. Coming back from this first expedition, she said “Now Amazonia was in my blood.” Mee. In Search of Flowers. p 43.

The trip proved artistically fruitful for her. Mee returned to São Paulo with a portfolio filled with sketches, dramatic landscapes, and meticulous botanical studies. She presented her work to the city’s Botanical Institute. Impressed, the botanists sponsored an exhibition of her paintings. Mee continued showing her work throughout 1958. An exhibition in Rio de Janeiro brought her to the attention of many well-known professionals such as landscape architect Roberto Burle Marx, Dr. Alcides Teixeira, the Director of the Botanical Institute of São Paulo,and Dr. Lyman Smith of the Smithsonian.

Smith, a world authority on bromeliads, invited Mee to join him on a project cataloging tropical flowers for his Flora Brasilia series. Working side-by-side with a botanical authority like Smith, Mee rapidly acquired a specialist’s knowledge of bromeliads and a particular brilliance in depicting them. On later expeditions into the Amazon, using her then-experienced field botanist’s eye, she discovered three new species which were named after her: Aechmea meeana, Neoregelia margaretae, and Neoregalia meeana.

Smith and Mee published their collaborative volume, The Bromeliads, in 1969. In the introduction, Smith wrote “As you look at these pictures, remember that they achieved their artistic effect and scientific accuracy because Margaret Mee was not satisfied to drag a dying plant back to the comfort of her studio nor to reconstruct from a dead one. Instead, she met them where they lived and painted them there, evolving a highly successful technique through trial and error.” Smith, Lyman B., and Margaret Mee. The Bromeliads. South Brunswick and New York: A.S. Barnes & Co., 1969. p 5.

Mee began her relationship with Dumbarton Oaks around this time. After her third expedition (1964), Mee left the São Paulo Botanical Institute and transitioned to painting full-time. The evening lecture she gave at Dumbarton Oaks in April of 1967 helped introduce her work to a much larger audience, including Dr. Leonard Carmichael of the National Geographic Society. This encounter led to the Society sponsoring Mee’s next expedition, this time to a little known Amazonian mountain, the Cerro da Neblina – the Mountain of Mist.

In total, Mee made fifteen journeys to remote areas of the Amazon; some were scientifically groundbreaking, others an artist traveling for subjects. She received a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the Brazilian government funded a folio of paintings. Shows of her work continued, culminating in a watershed exhibition at Kew Gardens in 1988-1989. The Kew Gardens exhibition coincided with the publication of her book, In Search of Flowers of the Amazon Forests, based on excerpts from her travel diaries covering expeditions between 1956 and 1988. The later diaries documented the destruction of massive parts of the forests. Mee became a significant spokesperson for conservation of the Amazon, helping to document the devastation through her work. During the thirty years of her career, she saw Amazonia shrink from a vast wilderness to an endangered ecosystem encroached by civilization and commercial exploitation.

While in England in 1988 for interviews and lectures to raise awareness for the Amazon and support the Kew exhibition, Mee was killed in a car accident. Her activism may have ended, but her work lives on. A unique combination of scientific accuracy and artistic beauty characterizes her paintings, and Mee is considered by her peers to be among the best in the field of botanical illustration. Parts of the Amazon she so loved are now gone, and many of the plants she carefully rendered are extinct, but her paintings remain a testament to the endangered beauty of the rainforest.

Margaret sketching a Clusia, Río Negro, 1967 [photographer unknown]

The Dumbarton Oaks Rare Book Collection is pleased to present twenty-one of Margaret Mee's paintings in this online gallery.

All photographs of Margaret Mee are used courtesy of South American Pictures Collections, Tony and Marion Morrison, Margaret Mee Collection.

]]>No publisherMargaret MeeBrazilAmazonBotanicalPaintingsBromeliadsLyman SmithRoberto Burle MarxKew Gardens2013/04/17 10:32:00 GMT-4Exhibit SectionThe Paintingshttp://www.doaks.org/library-archives/library/library-exhibitions/margaret-mee/the-paintings
The Dumbarton Oaks Rare Book Collection presents botanical paintings by Margaret Mee, 1956-1969These twenty-one paintings, acquired by Mrs. Robert Woods Bliss, were painted by Margaret Mee during her first three expeditions into the Amazon, between 1956 and 1969. The overall purpose of these paintings was to serve as aesthetically accurate scientific illustrations, however, Mee's obvious passion and talent elevates her work.

Mee at work in the field, May 1988, Río Negro

In 1969, Mee published a book of prints, which featured many of her early paintings. Roberto Burle Marx, a well-known landscape architect and close personal friend, wrote in his introduction to the volume that, “As a specialist in scientific illustration she is the most efficient I have ever known. Her work achieves perfection without becoming stereotyped…. In fact, Margaret Mee takes the plant from its obscurity and shows its colour, rhythm, texture, and form without ever becoming pretentious in so doing.” He praised her work, rating it equal to and in some ways better than the botanical drawings of her peers. He spoke from personal experience about Mee’s fieldwork, saying:

"I remember an excursion I made to collect rare plants hitherto not cultivated. Margaret Mee, with her gift of keen observation, surprised us by always finding the rarest species. She has the desire to identify her discoveries and the joy of sharing them with plant lovers. It is this which takes her into the forests as an explorer, braving poisonous snakes, illnesses and more, in order to arrive at the supreme moment of flowering, the moment when Nature seems to reveal herself in all her beauty, mystery, and luxuriance. The artist takes advantage of this magic moment to discover and portray an infinite series of secrets and revelations, rich in colour and form."Mee, Margaret. Flowers of the Brazilian Rainforests; collected and painted by Margaret Mee. London: Tryon Gallery, 1969. p 11.

This almost magical quality infuses Mee’s paintings. She is now highly regarded not only as a botanical illustrator, but as a skilled and nuanced artist. It is no wonder that Mrs. Bliss was attracted to her work.